Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to clean rooms and, more particularly, to a clean room system and method where energy savings are realized at times when the clean room is not in use.
Description of Related Art
A clean room, typically used in manufacturing or scientific research, has a low level of environment pollutants, such as dust, airborne microbes, aerosol particulars and chemical vapors. More specifically, a clean room has a controlled level of contamination that is specified by the number of particles per cubic meter at a specified particle size.
A clean room can be very large. Entire manufacturing facilities can be contained within a clean room with factory floors covering thousands of square meters. Clean rooms are used extensively in semiconductor manufacturing, biotechnology, the life sciences, and other fields that are sensitive to environmental contamination and connecting genealogy information.
The air entering a clean room is filtered to exclude dust particles, and the air inside of the clean room is constantly re-circulated through high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filters and/or ultra-low penetration air (ULPA) filters to remove contaminants generated inside of the clean room.
Heretofore, air handling systems of clean rooms were continually operated at full capacity in order to maintain the cleanliness of the clean room at or below one or more predetermined international standards organization (ISO) levels, including, but not limited to USP797 and EU standards. It would, however, be desirable to provide a clean room control system and method that reduced the energy consumed by the air handling system of a clean room at times when the clean room was not in use while, at the same time, maintaining the cleanliness of the clean room at or below the predetermined ISO levels. It would also be desirable to provide a clean room control system and method that enabled the air handling system of the clean room to return to an operation state (where the air handling system operates at full capacity) from a low or reduced energy state upon demand, at predetermined times, or upon the occurrence of an unexpected event.